Ramelius Resources Limited (ASX:RMS) has announced a major increase to the Mineral Resource for the Eridanus Project in the Cosmos Mining Area at Mt Magnet in Western Australia.
Managing Director, Mark Zeptner, said the new figure of 12 Mt @ 1.3 g/t Au for 490,000 ounces represents a 226% increase over the Mineral Resource reported in 2018.
Mr Zeptner said the new numbers also provide the option of a large Stage 2 open pit which currently being assessed.
“The significant increase to the Eridanus resource is the result of over twelve months of drilling by the exploration team, working in tandem with the operations team, at Mt Magnet,” Mr Zeptner said.
“This work appears to have unearthed the third major endowment area at Mt Magnet, after Hill 50 (2.1Moz) and Morning Star (1.2Moz) and is a testament to the ongoing potential of the camp.
“Mine planning is underway to assess a much larger open pit than the recently commenced version, that being a 130m deep Stage 1 pit based on a 110,000 ounce ore reserve, which would provide longer term base-load feed to the Mt Magnet processing facility and also increase overall mine life.
“Drilling at the Eridanus deposit has continued to deliver significant results with wide intercepts of stockwork style mineralisation occurring within the host Eridanus Granodiorite, below the current open pit.”
Ramelius has completed 18 deep exploration and six in-pit resource definition RC holes during October and November 2019 for a total of 10,151m.
The Holes have been drilled in multiple orientations in order to work around current mining operations and to test the stockwork mineralisation from various directions. A large RC grade control programme has also been conducted within the pit and data has been used for around the top 40m of the resource model generating Measured Resources.
Six resource definition holes were drilled from inside the current pit. Four holes targeted the core stockwork zone, 50 – 200m below the current pit and returned highly encouraging results of:
154m at 1.77 g/t Au from 151m including 15m at 4.03 g/t Au; 210m at 2.12 g/t Au from 129m, including 25m at 3.72 g/t Au; 71m at 1.03 g/t Au from 162m, including 17m at 1.56 g/t Au; and 57m at 3.84 g/t Au from 145m, including 16m at 8.29 g/t Au.